HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit Review

Overview

It has been a long time coming, but two significant things have happened. Firstly we have the third product from HyperX since they distanced themselves from parent company Kingston. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the long awaited replacement for the highly rated and extremely popular Kingston HyperX Genesis range. Here today we have the HyperX Savage 8GB 2400MHz Kit. Unlike their mainstream siblings the HyperX Fury, which are available in a multitude of colours (black, blue, red and my favorite white), the HyperX Savage is only available in red (a really nice shade of metallic red though). The HyperX Gen… Er, I mean Savage is available in various different speeds and kit capacities, but the one HyperX have kindly lent us for review, is rated at 2400MHz and latency of 11-13-14 @1.65V, whilst comprised of two 4GB DIMMs (ok, it’s an 8GB kit…). So let’s go take a closer look!

‘Attack the competition with HyperX® Savage memory. Its unique, asymmetrical red heat spreader is made from high-quality aluminium and has a black PCB and a diamond cut finish to make your game shine and help you stand out in the crowd. The heat spreader dissipates heat so that your system stays cool and reliable and its low profile fits under oversized CPU coolers. Built-in, hand-tuned XMP profiles mean that even noobs can overclock their platforms with simple adjustments in BIOS.’

The HyperX Savage kit arrived at pcG fairly well protected in a clear plastic blister which rather nicely shows off the DIMMs inside. Across the middle of the package is a bright red HyperX sticker with the RAM specifications and warranty link details, the sticker also doubles up as a seal for the blister. Rather oddly there is no mention of the model name on the front packaging???

The back shows erm… Well nothing really, but being transparent the DIMMs look good. 😉

Emptying out the package reveals its full contents. Being RAM, there isn’t really a lot there, but then does there really need to be? The blister contains two HyperX Savage 2400MHz 4GB DIMMs, a HyperX case sticker and an installation guide and warranty guide.

At the time of writing, the HyperX Savage 8GB 2400MHz Kit is available from Amazon for £83.97 or OverclockersUk for £89.99 and offer a limited lifetime warranty

First Impressions

The first thing that struck me when taking hold if the HyperX Savage sticks was the colour. As you can clearly see the DIMMs are a metallic red colour, but unlike many other PC hardware that claims to be metallic red, but are often slightly pink or orange, the Savage really are red!

Another positive feature of the Savage is the RAM measurements. Like all DDR3 sticks they measure 133.4mm across across the length, but the height is a measly 30mm. This means the Savage will fit in any rig regardless of CPU cooler and the colour will match nearly any Gaming motherboard (well they do all seem to be red these days 😉 ).

I’ll clear this up now… The HyperX Savage look beautiful! The matte black of the DIMM PCBs is a great contrast to the heat spreaders. Which themselves follow an aggressive styling, the right end much likened to the teeth on a saw or perhaps even a ‘savage’ animal. To the right of the spreader we have the model name printed in black, whilst on the right the HyperX logo in silver. The logo is raised, but I’m not sure if it is glued on or a moulded part of the heat spreader.

Over on the back is nigh on identical. We have no logo or model name of this side, but we do have the specifications and warranty sticker.

Hardware Installation

Installing the HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit into our Test Rig was as easy as ever. The DIMMs measure a maximum height of 30mm and I had no issues with our test cooler the Raijintek Themis, which should mean you are unlikely to have issues with other CPU coolers either.

The Test Rig booted first time without a hitch. With the MSI Z87 G45 motherboard left on Auto settings the HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB sticks are automatically set to a frequency of 2400MHz (11-13-14-32).

Testing Methodology/Setup

The HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit was tested as part of our normal Test Rig, using Windows 7 64Bit (Service Pack 1) with all relevant Drivers installed. Prime95 (Blend) was used to test stability and the following benchmarks were also used.

Despite looking great, the HyperX Savage aren’t the fastest DIMMs we’ve seen here at pcG. As you can see from the images above, AIDA64 shows the throughput and latency of the HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit and that it is the slowest 2400MHz kit we’ve tested on our current test rig. By comparing them to our test RAM the Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB 2400MHz there is quite a difference in performance. This is no doubt down to the slightly looser timings (surprising how much difference a couple of digits makes isn’t it!).

Of course are you likely to notice the performance gap outside of benchmarking? It’s highly unlikely. 😉

Gaming Related Benchmarks

To give us some idea of the effect the increase in memory speed has on Gaming, we’ve run the benchmarks below on both the Savage and our Beast test RAM. The HyperX Savage were run at their full rated speed of 2400MHz speed, whilst our test RAM the Kingston HyperX Beast kit was also run on their 2400MHz XMP profile. Let’s see how they compare!

As we are all well aware, RAM sticks with a higher capacity or higher MHz might be something we all want to own, but when it comes down to Gaming really makes very little difference. As you can see from the above table, the only really noticeable differences are in the Tomb Raider and Metro Last Light benchmarks. Is it enough to be a Game changer? certainly not.

Final Thoughts

Being the third product from HyperX since they went solo and as the long awaited replacement for the popular Kingston HyperX Genesis. I admit I was rather looking forward to reviewing the HyperX Savage 8GB 2400MHz Kit (in fact if you ask pcG James I’ve been chasing these since I first heard rumours at the beginning of the year! 😉 ). So what’s the verdict? Have they met my expectations or become a disappointing flop?

The HyperX Savage arrived well protected in a simple clear plastic blister with very little in the way of livery (erm… more or less nothing actually). What this did though, is show off the DIMMs inside!

The RAM sticks themselves are solid with no movement on either heat spreader and offered an incredibly low profile (30mm at their highest point), meaning that it doesn’t matter what size your cooler is, these sticks are going to fit.

More importantly the HyperX Savage look stunning. The metallic red is exactly that (not pink or orange), whilst the heat spreaders have an aggressive and unique styling.

Performance-wise they can’t quite match up to our previously reviewed 2400MHz DIMMs in the AIDA64 tests, but when it comes down to their more important roll in Gaming, they perform just as well as any of them.

The HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB kit will set you back just over £80.00 of your hard earned pennies which in comparison to other similar kits out there, is a little more expensive. Of course the Savage are a new product, so this is likely to be the case anyway. Their performance may not be quite as high as some of the others, but can you point out a better looking DIMM anywhere else on the market?